Every Memory Reminds Me Of You
by Menokai
Summary: The Yorozuya, separated and heartbroken, before the events of the movie.
1. The Yato

**Chapter 1:**

The Yato

* * *

Anchorage (noun)

 _The desire to hold on to time as it passes._

* * *

Edo crumbles from within as the wealthy and those who can afford to scrape all of their funds together flee to the safety of space. Buildings begin to look more and more weathered without proper care or maintenance as they stand against the elements of Earth's seasons and varying weather. Oddly enough, the Terminal seems to collapse within itself at the tail-end of the first panicked year, but people are too concerned with surviving to worry about the condition of the once-stalwart tower of unbending metal.

Kagura isn't sure what called her to stand amongst the warped steel at the base of a sad, derelict grave. Perhaps, the young Yato muses, it's a sentimentality. Her father had warned her within the first few months, months after Gin-chan had disappeared and hundreds had already begun to die, that if she didn't leave now, she would never set her feet off Earth again. It is only now, standing in the rubble of the Terminal with a deep foreboding that shakes her core as badly as her mother's death and Gin-chan's disappearance, that she believes him.

Nobody will escape Earth, and there isn't a soul in space who spares a thought for this dying planet anymore. Kagura remembers blood spilling into endless rain, and decides that whether she had remained or left does not matter, in the scheme of things. In her mind, there was never a choice between Gin-chan and the cold house on a distant planet. Just as her father and her brother did not return to that dead home, neither will she. The home she is waiting for here will return without fail, and she will hold ruthlessly on to time until he stumbles through the doors and falls flat on his face in the hall, too drunk to balance. Kagura will scold his deaf ears as he snores, and then she will sigh exasperatedly through her nose and throw the warmest blanket from her futon on him.

Sadaharu whines, interrupting Kagura's fond memories while he paws at the dirt as he paces in front of the abandoned tower once a monument to the power of the Amanto. His white fur is a stark contrast to the heartless gray metal. Kagura brushes a hand over his thick fur, then gently digs her fingers into his scruff, saddened by the bones she feels sharply under his skin. He has grown weaker since the Terminal had suddenly caved into itself, and she worries that yet another of her family will be pried from her arms. She refuses to wrestle with him anymore, has refused for three years, and will refuse for three more until the trees stop wilting and Gin-chan returns and Sadaharu is fluffy and fat and the White Plague is cured.

She brushes a strand of hair behind her ear, unused to its growing length, and sits on a jutting piece of metal debris. Kagura tips her head back and stares at the empty blue sky, closes her eyes, and waits.

* * *

 _Published: 8/17/2017_

 _Edited: 8/18/2017_


	2. The Student

**Chapter 2:**

The Student

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Hiraeth (noun)

 _A homesickness for a home you cannot return to, or that never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past._

* * *

Over the years since the White Plague ravaged Edo, the Shimura dojo became a refuge for the weak, the ill, and the homeless. Many are grateful for the unselfish generosity of the Shimura siblings, and the dojo is often regaled with as much respect and awe as a well-known school. It is not the reputation either sibling had imagined or aspired to create with their home and legacy, but neither regret it. It's something to be proud of, to see the weary smiles bloom on starved people's faces when they are offered a meal as simple as a fresh bowl of rice and a cup of hot tea.

Shinpachi stares at the numerous relaxed faces around him, some withered by the Plague, others weakened by Earth's gradual deterioration, and doesn't feel anything but the familiar, sharp stone of grief that has been weighing in his stomach since Gintoki died. It has only gained prominence since his sister caught the Plague. He used to wonder about that, early on. He used to question his emotions and the foreign emptiness that dug itself a niche within his heart where Gintoki had taken root. It had only grown larger over the last five years, encompassing the entirety of what had been the happier times of the Yorozuya. His mind, for a moment, conjures an image of Kagura sitting in Gintoki's old chair, rocking back and forth and sucking on pickled seaweed, and all he feels is irritation.

Sakata Gintoki is dead. Even if he were to somehow be alive, there isn't a Yorozuya for him to return to any longer. Kagura can sit and wait for his ghost for as long she wants, but Shinpachi refuses to depend on the whims of dreams and what ifs.

"Glasses guy!" a young boy calls from the corner of the dojo from where he sits beside a futon, holding a cup of tea for his trembling mother. Shinpachi's eyebrow twitches, but he does not rant as he would have done five years ago. He has grown beyond his immaturity.

The poor woman is obviously suffering. Each one of her ribs is plainly visible, her eyes are sunken in and staring emptily into space, and her hair is a tangle of ghastly white strands. Shinpachi kneels at the boy's side and gently helps him with getting the woman to drink. He rubs her throat when she croaks and tea bubbles on her lips, and then carefully eases her back on the sweat-soaked futon. Shinpachi sits back and watches over the kindly woman until she has passed. The boy is crying, sobs muffled by the hands he holds over his mouth, as he witnesses his mother's fading life. Once, Shinpachi may have comforted him, but now he does not even try; they all carry grief inside them permanently now. What more is another death?

Shinpachi's hand rests on the wooden sword at his hip, an unfathomable ache in his chest, before he ruthlessly destroys it with the gleaming steel edge of his sword.

* * *

 _Published: 8/18/2017_

 _Edited: 8/19/2017_


	3. The Samurai

**Chapter 3:**

The Samurai

* * *

Novaturient (adjective)

 _Desiring or seeking powerful change in one's life, behavior, or situation._

* * *

His awareness of the Enmi nanomachines inside him emerges gradually. It begins with a strange, absent buzzing in the center of his chest that he rubs away with the passing thought that he had drank too much the night before. Next that follows are the dreams of darkness, space, and a presence strengthening around him with a starvation so fierce it makes his head pound with migraines. Yet, despite the ravenous howling of his nights, when he awake he can barely find it within himself to look at food without feeling incredibly nauseous. Not even a parfait can tempt his dwindling appetite.

Gintoki wakes up one morning with a burning sensation on the side of his right bicep, but there is not so much as a scratch on his skin. Shortly after, he experiences coughing fits at random that increase incrementally in severity with every cough that suffocates his lungs. He manages to avoid worrying Kagura and Shinpachi, miracle of miracles, but the old hag watches him with too-perceptive, worried eyes that eventually make him avoid the bar altogether. Hijikata bumps into him one day, looks angry enough to bite off his cigarette, but then he stops and eyes Gintoki up and down with a peculiar look in his eye before asking Gintoki, in his own unique brand of insults, if he is alright.

Gintoki rarely leaves his bedroom now, and the kids have noticed something's wrong.

The final straw that clicks the symptoms together in his mind is when he walks in the bathroom one night after one of the worst dreams yet. Gintoki washes his crusty face, looks up at his reflection in the mirror, and gawks at the snowy-white shade of his formerly silver hair. It disappears the moment he blinks, but Gintoki knows what he saw, and his mind races with suspended disbelief because the Enmi had been slain by his own hand, with his own sword, ten years ago. His throat seizes and he bends over the sink until he's nearly convinced he's hacked up a lung with the amount of blood that falls from his mouth. He wipes his face with toilet paper that he hides beneath other trash in the dumpster, stands in the alleyway beside his home, and begins to plan.

Witnessing the destruction of Edo without any control over his actions is a strange, terrifying sight. It's a nightmare that has trapped and sucked him in as the demons of his past force him to raise his sword, make his face grin, and deal the final blow. Edo burns and the Enmi core hums with vengeful satisfaction in his chest as it reaches out with invisible arms to corrupt the very planet's heart. There is nothing more Gintoki can do to prevent it.

The core gains sentience, and along with it strength. As it razes town after town, slaughters families, and crosses the ocean with a desperate hunger to destroy, Gintoki stirs in the depths of his mind that now serves as his iron-barred prison and observes with worried eyes. He witnesses the core's ever-growing power and it's relentless need for blood and death, and he wonders if the preparations he's made to change the future will work. If he, the White Demon of the present, cannot defeat the Enmi, then how can the White Demon of the past?

Gintoki thinks of the old hag, of the Shinsengumi, of his old friends and new enemies, and of all the comrades he had met over his years in Kabuki after the Joui War. He thinks of the Yorozuya Gin-san sign hanging on the railing outside his home. Gintoki thinks of Kagura and Shinpachi as they stare up at him with judgemental eyes.

 _Stop being stupid and letting an alien virus control you,_ they tell him.

 _Brats,_ he says softly, _don't tell me what to do_.

He stands on the ruined rooftops that oversee the graveyard stretching for miles just outside Edo. He sees his past self walking down the steps with the time machine trailing several paces behind the shell-shocked man. The Enmi core purrs in smug confidence as it sees these new enemies, jeering at the plan it knows that Gintoki had hatched, but he only smirks.

It's time to save the future, with or without Sakata Gintoki.


End file.
